Verbum et Ecclesia
ISSN: (Online) 2074-7705, (Print) 1609-9982
Bible translation and gender, challenges
and opportunities – with specific
reference to sub-Saharan Africa
Author:
Aloo O. Mojola1,2
Affiliations:
1
Faculty of Theology, St Paul’s
University, Kenya
2
Department of Old
Testament Studies, University
of Pretoria, South Africa
Corresponding author:
Aloo Mojola,
aloo.mojola@gmail.com
Dates:
Received: 30 Oct. 2017
Accepted: 23 Mar. 2018
Published: 13 Aug. 2018
How to cite this article:
Mojola, A.O., 2018, ‘Bible
translation and gender,
challenges and
opportunities – with specific
reference to sub-Saharan
Africa’, Verbum et Ecclesia
39(1), a1820. https://doi.
org/10.4102/ve.v39i1.1820
Copyright:
© 2018. The Authors.
Licensee: AOSIS. This work
is licensed under the
Creative Commons
Attribution License.
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Page 1 of 9 Original Research
This article focuses on issues of gender in Bible translation and looks at how the dominant
patriarchal framework that underlies biblical cultures, including both traditional and
contemporary cultures, influences biblical interpretation and ensuing Bible translations in
diverse languages. This framework undermines gender-neutral or gender-sensitive
interpretations and translations of the biblical text in favour of the dominant patriarchal
tradition. Belief in biblical inerrancy and infallibility tends to buttress and lend solid
unwavering support to the patriarchal standpoint in spite of the diversity and variety of
numerous contested, differing and even opposing interpretations on many key biblical
teachings. The article seeks to challenge the role of patriarchalism in biblical interpretation
and translation drawing on insights from gender studies, translation studies, biblical studies
and cultural studies. It seeks to interrogate the ways in which the Bible is used to defend
patriarchalism and to propose a gender-sensitive approach rooted in the principles of justice,
fairness and the equality of both male and female as created in the divine image.
Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article brings to question basic
assumptions on issues of gender in the following disciplines – Biblical studies, translation
studies and social-cultural studies – and propose a rethinking of these assumptions and if
possible their abandonment and replacement by those that promote egalitarianism and justice
across the sexes.
Introduction
As author, my interest in the subject of Bible Translation and Gender stems from my work in Bible
Translation under the umbrella of the United Bible Societies, spanning a period of over 30 years,
beginning from 1983 when I stepped down from my work as a lecturer in philosophy at the
University of Nairobi, Kenya, to embark on a career in Bible Translation with the Bible Societies in
Africa. This required retraining and a serious commitment to study biblical languages and acquire
skills in biblical exegesis, historical, social and cultural analysis, literary and discourse analysis
and so on. Bible translation, indeed the work of translation in general, is by its very nature an
interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary activity and calling. I spent many years working with Bible
translations in the languages of Eastern Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and
Eastern D.R. Congo) as a translation consultant and later as the Africa Translation Coordinator for
the United Bible Societies. At the latest count I was surprised to note that I have been privileged
to work with or to contribute to midwifing over 60 different Bibles and New Testaments in various
African languages. This is humbling and at the same time something for which to thank God.
During this period I encountered and grappled with numerous texts that required paying
attention to questions of gender and specifically gender in Bible translation, or how gender is
handled in biblical texts across languages and cultures – with specific reference to African realities.
My involvement as the director of a Kenyan Non- Governmental Organization (NGO), Men for
the Equality of Men and Women (MEW), that champions and defends the equality of the sexes has
also helped me to appreciate better the importance of gender equality locally and globally.
The power of Bible translation
The Bible is not always perceived or received in a neutral way. The Bible generates a whole range
of complex and often ambiguous attitudes. For some the Bible is perceived as an oppressive tool,
a tool that has historically been used to alienate and to dehumanise. It has been viewed as an
instrument of empire, of colonial and cultural domination, of conquest and subjugation or as Karl
Marx once put it in that memorable phrase, ‘the opium of the people’. Not long ago the Bible was
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used by some to provide a basis for the discrimination and
oppression of minorities, including women, black people and
others. The Bible is obviously not neutral. Its entry into a
culture sends mixed and contradictory messages. Where
some see loss, others see gain. Where some see dispossession,
others see empowerment. Where some see conquest, others
see freedom. Where some see foreignisation, cultural
dispossession and alienation, others see a call and challenge
to reclaim our true humanity, a return to our divine image
and values. For the vast majority in the Christian church, the
Bible is viewed as a transformative tool – indispensable to the
life and work of the church. It is the church’s foundational
and guiding document, central to the formulation of her
creeds and to the formation of her faith and practice, to the
fostering and nurturing of just and loving communities. Yet
the Bible cannot be understood in a vacuum. It means
different things to different people.
Most of us meet the Bible in one or another of its numerous
translations. There is of course the original text of the Bible –
written in ancient languages that are no longer used – ‘dead
languages’, as these are sometimes referred to. As most know,
the books of the Christian Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible
were originally written in ancient Hebrew – except for parts
of the book of Ezra 4.8–6.18, 7.12–26 or the book of Daniel
2.46–7.28 originally written in the related ancient tongue of
Aramaic. The books of the New Testament are on the other
hand written in the ancient Greek tongue commonly called
Koine Greek because it was the common language, the street
language, the market language, the common person’s
language. The ancient (African) Alexandrian 2nd–3rd century
BC translation of the Hebrew scriptures (Biblia Hebraica)
commonly referred to as the Septuagint is written in ancient
Greek – the imperial lingua franca in the era of the Pax Graeca.
The original autographs of this biblical text no longer exist.
Extant copies of these have been unearthed or found stored
in diverse and various locations of the ancient biblical world.
Thanks to the painstaking, patient and demanding labours of
textual or text critical scholars, we have a rational basis for
believing that current critical editions of the biblical writings
are as close as we can get – given the available evidence. Yet
these critical editions of the ancient biblical texts remain in
the ancient languages, rooted in ancient cultural practices,
traditions, belief systems and historical contexts.
The books that make up the Bible were written by a variety of
individuals or groups of people over several hundred years
and covering a wide range of contexts, periods, people and
cultural traditions, as well as linguistic and religious
traditions. Moreover, these books get bogged down into thick
and sometimes impenetrable layers of both traditional and
modern interpretations spanning a wide range of periods –
Jewish, Christian and secular. The resulting kaleidoscope of
meanings and beliefs coexist in unexpected environments
and in unrecognisable guises. The challenge posed in
deciphering the complexity implied in such a corpus is truly
immense. This is a veritable challenge to biblical exegete and
translator alike.
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Original Research
Bible translators see themselves as called to provide access to
this ancient text. Indeed, without translation, the biblical
writings and their rich treasures would remain forever closed
and inaccessible to the millions whose lives are touched
by them. For the vast majority of people, the Bible that
they know and read or hear is a translated Bible – one written
in a language that they speak and understand, a domesticated
Bible that by means of a translator’s mediation has crossed
boundaries of time and space, of language and culture, of
ancient political, economic, historical and religious
environments and formations to those of our own time and
place.
To what extent does the Bible in your language or another’s
language resemble the original one? To what extent is it
possible for any translator to recover the original meanings
or the message of the ancient text in our modern translations
and environments? Is it possible to read this ancient text
other than from our own current contexts and in terms of our
own interests, ideology and situation? To what extent, then,
is translation a betrayal, a rewriting of the text? These and
numerous other questions continue to bedevil the modern
and postmodern translator.
The imperative to translate the Bible in terms of our language
and time, in terms of our own culture and categories is first
recorded on a large scale with the (African) Alexandrian
Greek translation. This signified a Hellenisation of the faith – a
rewriting of the text in Greek terms, in Greek categories, on
the basis of the underlying Greek life world and thought-
world. This was in effect a Greek incarnation – in the era of
the Pax Graeca. The next big story was Jerome’s Latinisation of
the biblical text in the 4th to 5th century AD (331–420) in the
era of the Pax Romana. Jerome essentially turned his back on
the lingua franca of a former imperial order to that of his own
time. His translation was said to be in a vulgar tongue, the
language of the street, of the common citizen – hence the
vulgate or the so-called Latin vulgate. Latin was yet to
become the language of the Church and liturgy – and
remained so right to recent times. Those who challenged
Jerome’s translation were to do so at their peril – among them
the renowned John Wycliff (1330–1384) of the Wycliff Bible
Translators fame or William Tyndale, who attempted a classic
and seminal translation in English. These paid the ultimate
price – with their blood.
The proliferation of new translations during and after the
Protestant reformation reflected a fragmentation and
weakening of the Roman Empire, the Roman Church and the
dominant Latin tongue. New empires and tongues were
emerging. The influential translation of Martin Luther in
German or the so-called authorised King James Version in
English in 1611, among others, were a product of this
development. The emergence of new power centres and the
colonisation of non-Western cultures and people created
opportunities for their evangelisation and Christianisation
by the emerging Christian powers. This is the wave that
launched the Bible Society movement and the era of
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vernacular Bibles in the languages of the peoples of Africa
and the southern continents. This development placed Bible
translation at the cutting edge of mission, in its role of
opening up dialogue with popular cultures, with the idioms
and speech of the heart and with inventing and creating the
foundations for the language of church, of liturgy and of
popular theology. Professor Andrew Walls of the University
of Edinburgh, Scotland, in a classic paper ‘The Translation
Principle in Christian History’, points out that (Walls 1996):
Christian faith rests on a divine act of translation – the word
became flesh and dwelt among us – (John 1.14). Any confidence
we have in the translatability of the Bible rests on that prior act of
translation. There is a history of translation of the Bible because
there is a translation of the word into flesh. (p. 26)
Seeing translation in these terms underlines the necessity of
making Christian discourse and practice deeply rooted in the
common culture, in everyday practices of the ordinary
person in his or her mundane daily existence. (Walls 1996)
writes:
The first divine act of translation into humanity – thus gives rise
to a constant succession of new translations. Christian diversity
is the necessary product of the incarnation. Translation is by its
very nature driven by the twin imperatives of relevance and
intelligibility. (pp. 27–28)
Focusing on the positive, we cannot fail to observe the many
contributions of translation in Africa, for example. It is
thanks to the indefatigable labours of Bible translators that
many of our African languages acquired their alphabets or
orthographic systems. Among the benefits that accompanied
Bible translation, the ones listed below are worth noting (see
a discussion of these in Delisle & Woodsworth 1995):
• the invention of alphabets
• the creation of a literary and a literate class (e.g. in many
places the first readers were often Christian; in East Africa
Christians were referred to as asomi, wasomi or variants of
the same)
• the preservation of languages and development of
national languages
• the emergence of national literatures
• the consolidation and propagation of faith
• the writing of dictionaries and grammars
• the transmission of tradition and cultural values
• the revival of languages in contexts where these are
threatened or dying
• the facilitation of cross-cultural and intercultural
communication
• the critical engagement with certain negative aspects of
traditional cultures such as FGM (critique dubbed 11th
commandment in the Kenyan Gikuyu struggle against it),
killing of twins (Slessor in Calabar) and so on.
It was translation of the Bible into the ancient language of
Geez in the 5th to 6th century CE that established the Ethiopic
script, literacy and writing in Ethiopia from ancient times to
this day. The old scrolls of the biblical text and its
interpretation, found in the ancient Ethiopian monasteries in
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places such as Gondar, Lalibela, Axum and so on, are a
testimony to this fact. In more recent times the example of
Bishop Samuel Adjai Crowther of Abeokuta, Nigeria, who
translated the Bible into his own Yoruba tongue in the mid-
19th century, shows the role of translation contributing to
laying the foundations for the growth of a language. Wole
Soyinka, the Nigerian and African Nobel laureate, as well as
other Yoruba scholars and speakers, are no doubt indebted to
the contributions of Samuel Adjai Crowther. There is no
gainsaying the monumental role of Crowther’s translation to
the Yoruba language and culture. It is comparable to that of
Martin Luther’s German translation, or to that of the King
James Bible translators.
Similarly, the Swahili Bible in East Africa has played the key
role of laying the foundations for a standard form of the
language. Coinciding with the era of Pax Brittanica, the
Swahili Bible and Swahili were assisted by the government
enforcement of a standard orthography and lexicon, the
turning of Swahili into a school language equipped with
standard texts and a publishing house, and its use in the
mass media in print and audio. As a lingua franca or trade
language of the entire East African region, currently spoken
by around 50–80 million people, with nine complete Bibles
translated into Swahili and five centuries of written poetry,
this language has greatly benefited from the gains that came
with Bible translation.
Translation theory and practice
I first got involved in the world of Bible translation in the early
1980s. This was at high noon of the era of the legendary Eugene
Nida, one of my mentors, role models and the most respected
translation scholar in the Bible Society movement. He was the
leading light and translation theoretician in the Bible Society
movement. His ideas still dominate this field, albeit without
open acknowledgement. Dr Nida was a great inspiration to me
during those early years of my career. From Nida I learnt that
translation is a cross-cultural, cross-temporal, cross-world
transformational, communicative event. As he put it, it involves
‘crossing the same river twice’ (obviously quoting Heraclitus –
‘No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same
river and he is not the same man’). The task of translation calls
for the utmost sensitivity and care, in the process of mediating
between worlds. Translation is not simply the process of
rendering individual words or individual sentences. It involves
penetrating the underlying cultural world and experiencing its
life world, feelings its rhythms and emotions as well as its
values. It involves operating in multiple worlds – primarily the
world of the source text and that of the receptor or target text –
being thoroughly at home in both, commuting comfortably
between them. It involves an understanding of these worlds
from one’s particular vantage point or perspective. It involves
interpretive choices influenced by one’s values, belief systems,
ideological orientation and vocation.
The translator cannot be cut off from his product. The
resulting translation has equally as much to do with the
complexities of the source text world, those of the receptor or
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target text world, as with the complexities of the person and
world of the translator. The translator’s invisibility makes us
blind to the fact that translators are not value free, ideology
free or agenda free. Translators are implicated in all kinds of
biases and preferences. The choices they make as they
translate foreign language texts reflect their socio-cultural
backgrounds, their levels of education, their beliefs and
values, their ideological orientation and so on. This blindness
leads us to the false assumption that translated texts are
objective and unbiased and free from the translator’s values
and agenda. We do well to remember that (Alvarez &
Carmen-Africa Vidal 1996):
Translators are constrained in many ways: by their own ideology;
by their feelings of superiority or inferiority towards the
language in which they are writing the text being translated; by
the prevailing poetical rules at that time; by the very language in
which the texts they are translating is written, by what the
dominant institutions and ideology expect of them; by the public
for whom the translation is intended. The translation itself will
depend upon all these factors. (pp. 1–9)
It clearly helps to know who has translated the text one is
reading, including the Bible one is reading, and what their
presuppositions and preunderstandings are, what their
commitments and agendas are, who commissioned and paid
for the translation, what the translation brief was and so on.
These factors influence and impact on the nature of the
translated text. Some contemporary Bible versions such as
the New Living Translation (NLT), New International Version
(NIV), New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) and English
Standard Version (ESV), among others, make patently clear
the translation philosophy underlying the translation and the
type of translators who make the translation team, their
provenance and their theological position. The translators
behind most foreign language texts, including the vast
majority of our Bibles, remain anonymous or unknown. They
remain invisible. The invisibility of the translator has caught
the attention of the American translation scholar Lawrence
Venuti (see Venuti 1998 – The translator’s invisibility – A history
of translation). Venuti is to be commended for highlighting
what he refers to as the ‘translator’s shadowy existence’
(cited by Goldberg 1993) and ‘weird self-annihilation, a way
of conceiving and practicing translation that undoubtedly
reinforces its marginal status’ (cited by Goldberg 1993). The
translator’s invisibility is for him ‘a mystification of troubling
proportions, and amazingly successful concealment of the
multiple determinants and effects of English language
translation, the multiple hierarchies and exclusions in which
it is implicated’ (Venuti 1995:16). This is undoubtedly one of
the ‘scandals of translation’ (Venuti 1998), to borrow the title
of one of his books.
Translating the name of God across
cultures and languages
As an illustration of the complexity of issues, let me recall
briefly an example from the Iraqw Bible translation project
that I was involved in a few years ago. The speakers of the
Iraqw language live somewhere in the environs of the
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Ngorongoro Crater of Northern Tanzania, in the Serengeti
ecosystem not far from the famous snow-capped Mt.
Kilimanjaro. The problem of translating the name or names
of God (the biblical God) in any language confronts the Bible
translator right at the outset. The Bible is first and foremost
about God and his or her dealings with humanity. One of the
first questions for the translator is, how do we translate the
name of God in our language? Do we take the path of
domestication and use the name or one of the names of God
as used in the vernacular or local language? Or do we take
the path of foreignisation and borrow the name or one of the
names of God as used in the lingua franca or neighbouring
dominant languages? Either one of these paths has been
taken. Of course, whether a foreign name or a local indigenous
name is used, these names are in every case Christianised,
which is, understood in Judeo-Christian biblical terms, as
interpreted by the theologians or custodians of the true faith
or doctrine. However, the choice for the path of foreignisation,
or domestication and indigenisation, is not easy. In the case
of translating of the name of God into the Iraqw language, we
were confronted with the historical, linguistic, cultural and
religious reality of a female God, namely Mother Looa. This is
the God that the Iraqw people have known across time, the
God who appears in their folktales and myths, in their daily
talk and conversations, in their traditional and cultural
prayers, in their imaginations and thought systems and
world views. They have for ages understood the creator of
the universe to be Mother Looa. She is the provider and
sustainer, the protector and loving mother of all humanity.
She is the one to whom everyone runs or calls when they are
in trouble. She represents all that is good, pure, beautiful and
true. Evil and calamity, suffering and pain are however
attributed to Neetlanqw, the male principle. Neetlanqw,
interestingly represents chaos, destruction and evil. He is the
very antithesis of Mother Looa, the female principle. The
Iraqw language refers to Mother Looa using a female
pronoun and to Neetlangw using a masculine pronoun.1 The
translation team was confronted with this reality. Everyone
on the translation team naturally settled for Mother Looa.
Thus, in the translation of the first book of the Bible, the first
chapter and first verse – the Iraqw book of Genesis – the
translators did not hesitate in writing that ‘[i]n the beginning
Mother Looa created the heavens and the Earth’. The book of
Genesis was later printed as a single book for distribution
and for testing the translation. For some time we all thought
that everything was fine, until the storm broke loose. Some of
the Christian leaders thought that there was something
wrong. In the Bible as everyone knows God is a father, God is
masculine. This is contrary to the Iraqw belief system and
world view where, to quote Elizabeth A. Johnson, God is the
‘She who is’ (see Johnson 1992). To cut a long story short, the
masculine God was imposed on the Iraqw translation. The
translators, who happened to be mostly female, a Norwegian
lady by the name of Froydis Nordbustad, Mary Bura
and others were blamed for the decision to use the local
1.The Iraqw language uses grammatical gender as does Hebrew and Arabic, or even
English. The Iraqw language belongs to the Cushitic language family, which is part of
the bigger Afro-Asiatic language family, of which the Semitic language family is a
prominent member.
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feminine name. Theirs was, however, the majority choice.
The minority choice imposed by the theologians and some
church leaders adopted the name of God as used in the
dominant Kiswahili lingua franca, that is, Mungu. However,
the problem was that Mungu (also known by such variants as
Mulungu or Murungu in related African Bantu languages),
although neither he nor she but simply human, was
interpreted through the Judeo-Christian masculine lens and
understood ontologically and not simply grammatically. I
was involved in another translation of the Bible in the Iringa
area of Tanzania’s Southern Highlands, namely the Kihehe
Bible Translation project, where God was referred to as
Inguluve. In Kihehe, the local language of this translation, as
with all African Bantu languages, there are no pronouns for
he or she. Bantu languages only have what are referred to as
‘semantic’ or ‘nominal’ classes into which everything falls.
Thus, all humans are placed in the people class.2 In the
traditional Kihehe belief system, the name of God, Inguluve,
happens to fall in the semantic or nominal class of things, and
thus without any attribution of their nature. The translators
decided to change the form of this name from Inguluve (God
as belonging to the class of non-human beings) to Nguluve
(God as belonging to the class of humans). This placed the
name God squarely in the people class and thus conferred
personhood to Nguluve. The current ongoing Kihehe Bible
translation has thus settled on Nguluve, the God who is
personal, and abandoned reference to Inguluve, God as non-
personal.
In yet another translation with which I am currently involved
with, namely the Kenya Ateso Bible translation project,
agreement on the name of God has been quite problematic. In
an earlier translation, the Uganda Ateso translation Bible, the
translation team settled on the name Edeke. This was however
mostly used by Protestant Christians. Catholic Christians,
who speak the same language and share the same culture,
rejected the use of Edeke, whom they understood as some
kind of evil being or spirit. The Ugandan Catholic Ateso
preferred to use a borrowed name for God, namely Katonda
(from the dominant Bantu Luganda lingua franca). In the
current ongoing Kenyan Ateso Bible translation project, the
translation team have settled on another indigenous name
for God, namely Akuj, who is also known as Nakasuban.
However, Nakasuban is feminine in the traditional religious
and cultural understanding. This turned out to be a major
problem, given the translators’ Judeo-Christian lens. After
2.Some 23 or 24 nominal or noun classes, mostly paired and with corresponding
semantics, have been identified in this group of languages. The most common and
ubiquitous noun class (class 1, mu) is singular and is paired with class 2 (ba), its
plural and usually refers to human beings, proper names, kinship terms,
personifications. Noun class 7, for example, has the prefix ki- (or variants eki-, chi-,
oshi-, tshi-, se-, isi-, e-, i-, etc.) and gives kintu and its variants. Its plural (class 8) has
the prefix bi- (or its variants ebi-, zi-, i-, zwi-, di-, izi-, etc.), which yields bintu, which
means ‘things’. However, its semantic content includes body parts, tools,
instruments and utensils, animals and insects, languages, diseases and outstanding
people. Bantu languages do not necessarily have the full set of these 23 noun
classes. Katamba (2003) notes that:
[i]n no single language are all the approximately 24 noun classes reconstructed for
Proto-Bantu … The highest number of classes retained by a single language seems
to be 21, as is the case in the Ganda language. Languages with numerous noun
classes are said to exhibit the canonical Bantu noun class system, while others
with ‘reduced’ noun class systems have only a rump of the original set… (See my
paper Mojola [in press] “The African Bantu concept of Ubuntu in the Christian
theology and praxis of Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and its implications
for global justice and human rights.” …’.)
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much discussion, the translation team has with much
difficulty transformed Nakasuban (a feminine God) into
Lokasuban (a masculine God), with the accompanying use of
male pronouns present in the language.3 Translation teams in
the related and mutually intelligible neighbouring languages
of Turkana and Karimojong (in which I was privileged to
participate a decade or so earlier) made similar decisions for
their Bibles, thus transforming their God from feminine to
masculine.4
The problem of gender in the Bible
The problem of translating the name or names of God captures
in a very dramatic and vivid manner the problem of gender in
the Bible. The first book and first chapter at the first verse
confronts the translator with a challenge on how to translate
the name of God, with a difficult choice on the question of
God’s nature and gender. The default position for most
translators of the Christian Bible is that God is necessarily
masculine, and moreover male, and should therefore be
represented or referred to using male pronouns (as required in
the case of those languages that have grammatical gender,
such as English, where pronouns like he, she or it are used). In
the case of languages such as the African Bantu languages that
do not have grammatical gender but instead use a system of
semantic or nominal classes that are not dependent on gender,
the choice is to place God in one of the semantic or nominal
classes. The default position is to place God in the ‘people’
class – which has special markers for persons. Languages with
grammatical gender and personal pronouns pose special
translation challenges for languages without grammatical
gender and personal pronouns. Finding exact equivalents to
replace the gendered pronouns is an impossible task. The
solution has been to find what Eugene Nida popularised as the
‘closest natural equivalent’, or as a dynamic equivalent
translation and not a formal correspondence translation. Even
though the Bible is replete with feminine metaphors or figures
for the divine, and in particular for the biblical God, it is the
masculine metaphors that are preferred and given prominence.
God is clearly not a woman or female, yet an impression is
given by translators and exegetes that God is masculine or in
the image of the male human being. This in effect is a kind of
idolatry because God is not a human being; God is spirit. Our
language for talking about God is simply metaphorical,
figurative, and symbolic and even anthropomorphic (McFague
1982). Such pictures are often elevated to an ontological status,
and the outcome is a reflection of our social ideas, social values
and social structures. These pictures, images, figures remain
what they are, namely metaphors, ways of speaking, of
understanding, of conceptualising. However, they should not
be confused with the objective reality they attempt to
comprehend.
The biblical perspective is sometimes described as androcentric
or sexist and is rooted in a linguistic, cultural and patriarchal
scheme or perspective that privileges the male as representative
3.The Ateso uses grammatical gender and thus both male and female pronouns.
4.The Turkana Bible was published in 2000, while the Karimojong Bible was published
in 2011.
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of all human beings. It unconsciously promotes the ‘belief that
persons are superior or inferior to one another on the basis of
their sex. It, however, includes attitudes, values systems, and
social patterns which express or support this belief’ (Johnson
1998). Johnson (1998) notes that ‘[i]nherited Christian speech
about God has developed within a framework that does not
prize the unique and equal humanity of women, and bears the
marks of this partiality and dominance’.
However, the traditional African perspective is not so. A
leading African female theologian, Mercy Amba Oduyoye,
succinctly captures the African experience of God with
respect to the gender question as follows (Oduyoye 2001):
Most of Africa has no images of God, so where there are no
gender specific pronouns it has been insisted that God is supra-
gender. It is also asserted that the God that created males created
females, gave both the same spirit and called both human. What
is central to our humanity, therefore is that both female and male
are akin to God having received the same divine spirit. Gender
does not define our worthiness, because it is not present in God.
For this reason in the theological writings of African women, the
gender of God plays a marginal role. (pp. 42)
She adds further:
We cannot ignore that fact that while there are many non-gender
specific and functional names of God, there are specific male
appellations and other references to God that attribute gender,
some male, others female. In the end, most African women and
men would say that the gender of God is irrelevant to their theology
and spirituality. Attributes said to be feminine and others said to be
masculine are all applied to God. While there is specifically male
and specifically female imagery of the Source Being to be found in
Africa, under the influence of Christianity and Islam a patriarchal
God has been enthroned, in whose name women who pray to God
as ‘God our mother’ are victimized. (pp. 43)
(This is among the many appellations for and references to
God found in Africa, as compiled, for example, by John Mbiti;
see his Concepts of God in Africa, 1970).
The invisibility and silence of women
in biblical and extra-biblical texts
One does not need to go very far in a critical and reflective
reading of the first chapters of the first book of the Bible to
start feeling that the female and feminine has somehow been
short-changed. The Creator is declared to be male and
masculine, and the ensuing narrative is written and
interpreted from a patriarchal perspective. The patriarchal
lens pervades and dominates both the Old and New
Testaments. In the Gospels, for example, a quick look at the
story of the feeding of the 5000 or 40005 confronts the reader
with the reality of this invisibility of the woman – present but
not counted; present but invisible. An unforgettable and
moving American novel that dramatically captures the
metaphor of invisibility in relation to humans is Ralph
Ellison’s classic narrative Invisible Man.
5.See for example Matthew 14.13–21, 15.32–39, 16.9–10, Mark 6.30–40, 8.1–10,
Luke 9.10–17. John 6.1–14.
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Original Research
This is not surprising. Susan Ackerman (2016) writes that:
The Hebrew Bible is, in many respects, a man’s book. Its authors
are arguably all male, and even scholars who point to a few
biblical texts that might have been authored by women must
admit that these compositions have been transmitted through
male scribal communities. The Hebrew Bible’s worldview is
likewise overwhelmingly male: while Exodus 19:15 is ostensibly
addressed to ‘all the people’, for example, men must in fact be
the exclusive audience of the command given there to ‘not go
near a woman’. The Bible’s main actors are in addition
predominantly male: the patriarchs of Genesis, Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob; the redeemer Moses, who is the principal figure of
Exodus-Deuteronomy; the all-male priesthood that is part of
Moses’ levitical line; the war leaders of Joshua and Judges; the
kings of 1–2 Samuel, 1–2 Kings, and 1–2 Chronicles, along with
the prophets of these same books and of the Hebrew Bible’s
prophetic corpus; the leaders of the postexilic community
described in Ezra and Nehemiah; and, according to tradition,
poets such as King David (to whom many of the psalms are
ascribed) and King Solomon (if one interprets Cant. 1:1 as
identifying Solomon as the author of the Song of Songs). Indeed,
over 90 percent of the 1400 or so individuals who are given
names in the Hebrew Bible are men. (p. 1)
A corollary to the invisibility of women in everyday situations
as well as texts including the biblical texts is the silence of
women. They are not only unseen but also unheard. Their
voices are deliberately or unwittingly suppressed and
silenced, marginalised and decentred. The strange thing is
that we are not even aware when this is happening. We take
it so much for granted, it is the norm! Should we continue to
be complicit in perpetuating this injustice?
I found Patricia Madoo Lengerman and Gillian Niebrugge’s
four basic questions (Lengermann & Niebrugge 2014) quite
helpful and eye-opening, and in some way fine pointers to
understanding the reality of the woman question. Starting
with the observation that ‘women are present in most social
situations’ and that they usually outnumber their male
counterparts, it is intriguing to note that they are deliberately
excluded from most social activities that demand leadership
or offer social, economic or other advantage. In most cases
they are relegated to passive roles, generally side-lined,
marginalised, downtrodden, misused, unappreciated,
underpaid, overworked, abused, and oppressed and so on.
This leads to the first question (Lengerman & Niebrugge 2014):
[a]nd what about the women? – Where are the women in any
situation being investigated? And if they are not present, why? If
they are present, what exactly are they doing? How do they
experience the situation? What do they contribute to it? What
does it mean to them? (p. 441)
The second question: ‘[w]hy is all this as it is?’ Is there
something special about males? Is it their biological or
physiological attributes? Or is this a reflection on the society
that chooses to value the male and devalue the female – a
society where the female is invisible, marginal, simply a
question of the ‘biologically determined attributes associated
with male and female’ or a result of ‘the socially learned
behaviours associated with masculinity and femininity’
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normally understood in terms of gender (p. 441)? Why for
example are only the male Patriarchs featured? Why only the
two sons of Adam? Why the two sons of Abraham? Why the
12 sons of Jacob, why the 12 male disciples of Jesus? Why
only male priests? Why are only males counted – as in the
feeding of the 5000 and 4000 males by Jesus?
The third question: ‘[a]nd what about the differences among
women?’ Does this have anything to do with ‘the invisibility,
inequality, and the role differences in relation to men that
generally characterise women’s lives …’? Are these not
‘profoundly affected by a woman’s social location – that is,
by her class, race, age, affectional preference, marital status,
religion, ethnicity and global location’?
The fourth question: ‘[h]ow can we change and improve the
social world so as to make it a more just place for all people?’
In other words, how do we become agents of change and of
transformation, towards a more just and egalitarian society?
How do we eliminate or minimise gender inequality and
other inequalities?
The above leaves us wondering, ‘How – and why does gender
inequality persist in the modern world’ (p. 442)? In other words,
how is it that many very good and well-meaning people, male
and female, are blind to this reality and are moreover complicit
and active in promoting and defending it? Clearly there is an
urgent need ‘to rediscover the world’ and a deliberate choice to
read the scriptures (Lengerman & Niebrugge 2014):
from the vantage point of hitherto invisible, unacknowledged
‘underside’ women, who in subordinated but indispensable
‘serving’ roles have worked to sustain and re-create the society
we live in. (p. 442)
The elephant in the room – Patriarchy
According to Allan G. Johnson (2005):
[a] society is patriarchal to the degree that it promotes male
privilege by being male dominated, male identified, and male centered.
It is also organized around an obsession with control and involves
as one of its key aspects the oppression of women. (p. 5)
A society is male dominated in that ‘positions of authority –
political, economic, legal, religious, educational, military,
domestic – are generally reserved for men’ (p. 5). It is male
identified in that:
core cultural ideas about what is considered good, desirable,
preferable, or normal are associated with how we think about
men and masculinity. The simplest example of this is the still
widespread use of male pronouns and nouns to represent people
in general. (p. 6)
A society is male centred, ‘which means that the focus of
attention is primarily on men and what they do’ (p. 10).
Another key characteristic identified by Johnson (2005)
an obsession with control as a core value around which social life
is organized. As with any system of privilege that elevates one
group by oppressing another, control is an essential element of
patriarchy: men maintain their privilege by controlling women
and anyone else who might threaten it. (p. 14).
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Original Research
Johnson (2005) has succinctly captured the defining
elements of patriarchy in terms of ‘its male-dominated, male-
identified, male-centered, and control-obsessed character’.
He notes that:
At its core, patriarchy is based in part on a set of symbols and
ideas that make up a culture embodied by everything from the
content of everyday conversation to literature and film.
Patriarchal culture includes ideas about the nature of things,
including women, men, and humanity, with manhood and
masculinity most closely associated with being human and
womanhood and femininity relegated to the marginal position
of ‘other’. It’s about how social life is and how it’s supposed to
be, about what’s expected of people and about how they feel. It’s
about standards of feminine beauty and masculine toughness,
images of feminine vulnerability and masculine protectiveness,
of older men coupled with younger women, of elderly women
alone. It’s about defining women and men as opposites, about
the ‘naturalness’ of male aggression, competition, and dominance
and of female caring, cooperation, and subordination. It’s about
the valuing of masculinity and maleness and the devaluing of
femininity and femaleness. It’s about the primary importance of
a husband’s career and the secondary status of a wife’s, about
child care as a priority in women’s lives and its secondary
importance in men’s. It’s about the social acceptability of anger,
rage, and toughness in men but not in women, and of caring,
tenderness, and vulnerability in women but not in men. Above
all, patriarchal culture is about the core value of control and
domination in almost every area of human existence. (pp. 38–39)
Like all social systems, patriarchy is difficult to change because it
is complex and its roots run deep. It is like a tree rooted in core
principles of control, male dominance, male identification and
male centeredness. Its trunk is the major institutional patterns of
social life as shaped by the roots – family, economy, politics,
religion, education, music and the arts. The branches – first the
larger, then the progressively smaller – are the actual
communities, organizations, groups, and other systems in which
we live our lives, from cities and towns to corporations, parishes,
marriages, and families. And in all of this, individuals are the
leaves who both make possible the life of the tree and draw their
form and life from it. Obviously, we’re in something that’s much
larger than ourselves, that isn’t us. But equally obvious is our
profound connection to it through the social conditions that
shape our sense of who we are and what kinds of alternatives we
can choose from. As a system, patriarchy encourages men to
accept male privilege and perpetuate women’s oppression, if
only through silence. And it encourages women to accept and
adapt to their oppressed position even to the extent of
undermining movements to bring about change. We can’t avoid
participating in patriarchy. It was handed to us the moment we
came into the world. But we can choose how to participate in it.
(pp. 18–19)
The social world and culture of the Bible is undeniably
patriarchal in the above sense, as are most social worlds and
cultures around the world. A faithful and regular reader of
the Bible can hardly fail to see this or gainsay its existence.
The African social world and cultures are illustrative of this
biblical reality.
Goldberg (1993) defends a theory of male dominance and
why men rule or the domination of hierarchies by males. He
argues for the universality of patriarchy, which he defines as
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‘any system of organization (political, economic, industrial,
financial, religious or social) in which the overwhelming
number of upper positions in hierarchies are occupied by
males’ (Goldberg 1993) and qualifies this thus:
[t]he point is that authority and leadership are, and always have
been, associated with the male in every society, and I refer to this
when I say that patriarch is universal and that there has never
been a matriarchy. (p. 14)
Moreover, to underline his argument that ‘patriarchy is
universal’ he states that ‘[t]here is not, nor has there ever
been, any society that even remotely failed to associate
authority and leadership in suprafamilial areas with male.
There are no borderline cases’ – that is, ‘there has never been
a matriarchy … no society or group anywhere ever associates
authority with a female when an equivalent male is available’
(Goldberg 1993:15). Goldberg’s argument may be historically
and empirically valid for most past cases, but the situation is
slowly changing. The point is that although this may have
been the case and may even be the case in a majority of
situations now, it is however not morally right. A theory such
as the above is often used to justify the commonplace practice
of perpetuating the reality of the invisibility and silence of
women. It should be remembered however that what is does
not constitute what ought to be. Might is not right. The tyranny
of numbers does not constitute a categorical imperative.
Julie Chinwe Ababa (2012), in her paper ‘Inequality and
Discrimination in Nigeria, Tradition and Religion as negative
Factors Affecting Gender’6 (2012:8ff), provides some disturbing
details illustrative of gender inequality and imbalance in
Nigeria (and glaringly observable throughout sub-Saharan
Africa). Her list is spread across seven main areas as follows:
(1) education, (2) health, (3) property rights, (4) violence and
physical abuse, (5) extreme poverty, (6) a weak economic base,
(7) political representation and (8) gender preference. However,
she focuses on the cultural domain, where ‘women are
deprived of basic rights, using culture and tradition to justify
the abuse’. Her long list included the following (Ababa:2012):
• Husbands are the Head of the families and their decisions
are final. Women must venerate, respect and obey their
husbands at all times.
• Most women spend their lives within marriage. They are
therefore constructed in the minds of men as dependents
and inheritors who need to listen to and follow their
spousal leadership and instructions.
• Some educated men have internalized the stereotype that
women are emotional and not given to rationality like
men.
• Wholesale adoption of gender ideas from fundamentalist
religions subordinating women to men.
• In the cultural setting traditional beliefs are strong that
for the continuity of the family lineage, preference of
male children to females should be encouraged.
• In similar vein, inheritance laws deny females any
inheritance, since she is considered to belong to her
6.Presented at the Federation of International Human Rights Museums (8–10 October
2012).
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Original Research
husband, on marriage. In rare cases, when considered for
inheritance, female children get less than their male
siblings.
• Early marriages of female children encouraged …
• Widowhood practices. Most widows blamed for spousal
deaths and invariably denied social and economic rights.
• Female Genital Mutilation: Traditionally women play a
passive role in sex, her active organ is removed to avoid
promiscuity … She has no right to enjoy sex because her
primary role in sexual intercourse is to satisfy her partner
and for procreation. (pp. 9–11)
She also lists the effects of gender discrimination on national
development:
including lack of decision-making positions as a result of low
investment in such sectors as health and education; limitation of
women’s choices; women’s reluctance to take responsibilities;
high incidence of insecurity, violence and crimes such as armed
banditry, kidnapping, prostitution, child trafficking, cultism;
increasing culture of begging because of widespread poverty;
inability to access quality health services; large number of school
drop-outs resulting from early marriages, early childbirths, poor
sanitation and shortage of female teachers; limited contributions
to household cash income and limited influence on spending at
family level; and the exclusion of women in decision-making roles
in our national life, resulting in loss and waste of a vast resource
that if well garnered could help situate Nigeria and Africa properly
and beneficially in world global systems. (pp. 11–12)
We eagerly look forward to the coming or emergence of a
post-patriarchal age (Cooey, Eakin & McDianiel 1991):
one in which women and men find possibilities for the fullness
of life, not through rule over one another, but rather through
freedom and mutuality, trust and ecstasy. The mutuality at issue
is not between people alone, but between people and other
creatures, between people and the earth. It is the fullness of all
life, not human life alone, much less male life alone – toward
which so many rightly aspire. (p. xii)
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Dr Mimi Haddad, President of Christians
for Biblical Equality, for giving him an opportunity to prepare
this paper for the 2017 Christians for Biblical Equality
conference in Orlando, Florida, USA. He also thanks Prof.
Dirk Human for facilitating publication in Verbum et Ecclesia.
Competing interests
The author declares that he has no competing interests with
regard to the writing of this article.
Funding information
Prof. Dirk Human, Head of Department, Old Testament
Studies, Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria,
South Africa facilitated the publication of this article due
to the authors association as Honorary Professor of the
Department of Old Testament Studies at the University of
Pretoria.
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